It's time to think past the Millennials because GenZ has started to take over the internet. If you aren't already targeting Gen Z then your content marketing strategy has a serious blind spot, and you need to rework it to include the Gen Z audience.

Today, I want to talk to you about Instagram dogs (#dogstagram). "But this is the global content issue," you'll say. You're right; it is. But what is more globally beloved than pets on social media? "Nothing" is the only acceptable answer.

You have, no doubt, heard the words "future-proof your content" from the EContent crew, as well as from any number of other digital content experts. But I think we have to take the idea of future-proofing one step further and begin thinking about creating sustainable data strategies that don't crumble under the weight of GDPR and whatever other laws might be on the way.

Every marketer reading this wishes he or she had fans who are this engaged and evangelical. But it isn't just Murderinos who want to tell everyone about their favorite podcasts. "96% said they had recommended a podcast to a friend. Word of mouth was the primary means for podcast discovery for these respondents, with just over half saying the primary means by which they learned about new podcasts were recommendations from program hosts or friends and family," according to the Knight Foundation.

They turned to the advice of professionals and trusted friends to make their transitions easier. We try to approximate that on the web. It's what user reviews are all about, and it's why so many brands are turning to influencers and content marketing to reach audiences. We love the convenience of Google and the ability to use our smartphones to do just about anything. But even the tiny computers in our pockets have their limits. They can only do so much. Sometimes, you need human expertise.

It will be no surprise to regular readers of this column that I can be a bit of a skeptic when it comes to new technology. I don't stand in line for the new iPhone. In fact, I'm usually a few generations behind, preferring to wait until the reviews are in on new features. I like to know exactly what I want and need in a device before I buy one—and I keep the gadgets to a minimum. But lately, I've been thinking about bringing a robot into my house.

Whether you're Kim Kardashian or a mommy-blogger, you're looking to turn the online following you've built into cash. And as influencer marketing gains more steam, this has become increasingly easy for many people. Maybe too easy. In the quest for authenticity, some brands are being taken in by fake influencers, and Mediakix set out to prove it by building its own fake Instagram accounts.

Since the beginning of 2017, we've gotten several inquiries from people wanting to publish sponsored content on our site. That's not a problem in and of itself. We offer sponsored content opportunities, which are clearly detailed in our media kit. The problem comes when these people make it clear they do not want the sponsored content to be identified as sponsored content. One even went so far as to ask us to publish her content under the name of one of our existing writers. Put simply, our answer was, Nope!

Awhile back, I quipped that the best thing that can happen to a print news publication these days is for President Donald Trump to call it out by name in a Twitter tirade. It wasn't an original thought. The "Trump Bump" was a phenomenon many media watchers already noticed.

Fake news isn't new, but for most of history, it has been the province of conspiracy theorists and weird family members with a chip on their shoulder. Before the web, the only way you would run across these kinds of stories was to buy a National Enquirer at the checkout stand. Stories about Elvis living a secret life as a scuba instructor in Belize had little consequence. But one of the unintended consequences of the democratization of information on the web is that it gave a wider platform to fake news.

In many ways, Pinterest is the little social media site that could. According to the 2016 "Internet Trends" report, 55% of online shoppers prefer Pinterest when it comes to finding or shopping for products. Smart publishers and brands will pay attention to this.

I recently picked up an issue of Vanity Fair from the newsstand and started searching for the table of contents. I almost gave up. There were so many ads to flip through at the front of the magazine, I was losing patience. Still, I was impressed with Vanity Fair for convincing so many brands to buy ads that I wasn't even pausing to look at—and yet, I couldn't help but wonder what those same advertisers demand from their digital partners.

As the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) defines it, "Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience-and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action." It's the last bit of that definition that many companies are still struggling with, in part because it isn't often that we can point to this kind of content marketing and draw a straight line to a purchase. However, in the case of the REI app, I think I can do just that.

This spring, I found myself sitting in several conference sessions about social streaming video--think Facebook Live and Periscope. According to the experts, viewers will watch live streaming video for 20 to 30 minutes on average. Compare that to just 3 minutes or so with prerecorded video, and you understand why content creators are excited. I got excited about it. I wondered how I could use this to engage our Facebook fans. (The consensus seems to be that Facebook is winning in the social streaming space.) I left the conference, which was filled with online video enthusiasts, and went home--where I quickly realized I had never seen a single one of my friends--even the most "socially" active friends-use Facebook Live. Ditto for Periscope.

According to research from The London Book Fair, more than two-thirds of 18 to 23-year-olds read episodic fiction--and 41% read it every month. Serial publishing is all the rage. Of course, this isn't surprising--at least not to me. The wild popularity of Serial showed us all that there is a market for storytelling that keeps listeners--or readers--dangling at the end of each week's episode.

Banner ads are outdated. Content marketing is king. Ad blockers are the wave of the future. Digital marketing is dead. You've probably heard all of this before and are not really sure what to make of it. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of digital marketing have been greatly exaggerated.

Do you have an ad blocker installed on your web browser? According to the 2015 report, "The Cost of Ad Blocking," from Adobe and PageFair, there are "198 million active adblock users around the world." In the U.S., ad blocking grew by 48% last year. At this point, though, only 16% of ad block traffic is mobile. That may sound as if it's good news, but it could also mean that there is a lot of room for mobile ad blocking growth.

In 2015, I did something, well, a little weird. I bought a Barnes & Noble membership. There is a store just minutes from my house, and I realized that I'd been spending a lot of time and money there during the past year-whether on tea in the cafe or on books-and if I had a $25 membership, it would have more than paid for itself. (Members get discounts on pretty much everything.) I finally caved when I found a new John Irving hardcover on the shelves. Usually, I wait for paperbacks, but as a longtime Irving fan (who had been struggling through some books that weren't exactly page-turners), I just couldn't wait.

I am the first to admit that, in the digital age, it is easy to play fast and loose with attribution. We are all guilty of it sometimes. For instance, when most of your writing is for the web, you get so used to linking to an article-rather than meticulously naming it and its author-that when you are writing for print, you might forget how to let your readers know exactly where a quote or statistic came from without the help of a hyperlink. This isn't a scholarly journal--no one wants to read footnotes, least of all me--but it's still important to give credit where credit it is due. It's one of those gray areas in which some people expect precise attribution for every fact and figure, and the rest of us are happy with a good faith effort that says, "This came from somewhere else." But lately, I've seen some plagiaristic antics that make my head spin--all in the name of content curation.

The last quarter of 2015 saw a flurry of notable media acquisitions. Time, Inc. shelled out a reported $20 million for Zooey Deschanel's HelloGiggles in October-and was also rumored to be circling Jane Pratt's xoJane, ready to make another purchase. A week or so before those announcements hit the street, Condé Nast bought Pitchfork. If you don't already see the trend, I'll spell it out for you: Old-media companies with big money are buying upstart digital media properties.

I wondered: When did we get too lazy to navigate websites-that generally serve up plenty of content suggestions in the sidebar-using simple links and arrows? As soon as the previous thought entered my mind, I had to ask myself if I was just being a cranky ol' fuddy-duddy. But I'm not the only one who finds the infinitely scrolling page to be a plague among us. Jack Schofield wrote on ZDNet, "Sometimes, ‘infinite scrolling' means you can never get the information you want." Truth!

Are you a journalist? Does a chill run up your spine when people start talking about "content"? Are you confused by the idea that working in a newsroom makes you a "content creator" and not just a reporter? Join the club. I talk to a lot of content experts, many of whom seem to think that creating a magazine/newspaper/news site is the same as creating "content."

So much of the internet is about celebrating cats that I thought it was high time I finally gave mine the shout-out they deserve. For the past year or so, I've been schlepping to the pet store every week to stock up on cat food. I have two mature cats who are now (much to my vet's delight) on a wet food diet. Keeping up with this is expensive and time-consuming. It's also a bit confusing, trying to figure out how much to feed them--mostly because one is lazy and has a slow metabolism, and the other has always been more active. Apparently, I was getting it wrong, because the vet told me I needed to up their calorie intake.

One panelist quoted a popular statistic that says 90 seconds is the sweet spot for videos aimed at Millennials. Not everyone was buying that, though. It's not that Millennials don't have an attention span-it's that they won't put up with your terrible content. If you don't capture their attention within 90 seconds, Millennials are going to bounce. Another panelist told an anecdote about the CEO of a large cable company saying something to the effect of, "I'm so sick of Millennials!"

In the publishing world, you want as many sets of eyes on your content as possible. Whether you're selling books or trying to get hits on your blog, you need eyeballs. Traditionally, you would prefer to "own" those eyeballs. This has been at the heart of tensions between content creators and companies such as Google for years. Publishers complain that Google is making money off of content it didn't create. Meanwhile, Google argues that without its search engine, no one would ever find the content that publishers are putting online. With the addition of social media to the mix, things have become even more complicated.

There are many lessons to be learned from the rise and fall of Gigaom. The thing that struck me, though, was that this seemed to be an argument for ad-supported media. You don't hear many of those these days. We're used to hearing about newspapers and websites shutting down after dwindling ad revenue is not enough to keep them afloat. We see The New York Times and its ilk instating paywalls to help pad the bottom line. Rarely, however, do we hear cautionary tales of companies that dared to experiment with different monetization strategies and lost.

I admit to being a skeptic about connected cars. But as Business Insider's John Greenough points out, "The connected car is equipped with internet connections and software that allow people to stream music, look up movie times, be alerted of traffic and weather conditions, and even power driving-assistance services such as self-parking." BI Intelligence estimates that by 2020, 75% of new cars will be capable of connecting to the internet. According to Greenough's article, BI Intelligence also says that "of the 220 million total connected cars on the road globally in 2020, we estimate consumers will activate connected services in only 88 million of these vehicles." I would be among the other 132 million people.

For a while now, I've been asking people the same question over and over: "Why does anyone still pay for a DVR?" At first, the answer probably seems obvious. "A DVR allows me to save my favorite shows to watch later, at my convenience," you say. And that's true. But when you take a closer look, the actual value proposition is not so clear cut.

All hell broke loose at The New Republic (TNR) in December 2014. It was almost comical-as long as you don't actually work there. There was a mass (and very public) exodus of editorial staff, complete with an open letter published on Robert Reich's Facebook page. Here is the gist of the letter: "The magazine's present owner and managers claim they are giving it new relevance while remaining true to its century-old mission. ... The New Republic cannot be merely a ‘brand.' It has never been and cannot be a ‘media company' that markets ‘content.'... It is not, or not primarily, a business. It is a voice, even a cause. It has lasted through numerous transformations of the ‘media landscape'-transformations that, far from rendering its work obsolete, have made that work ever more valuable."

I've been thinking a lot about attention span lately. Since the advent of Twitter, we've been told that our audience is no longer capable of maintaining interest in what we have to say if it's more than 140 characters long. Then Vine appeared on the scene with 6-second videos, and panic nearly ensued. Meanwhile, though, millions of Americans sat down on their couches to binge watch entire seasons of Orange Is the New Black. Clearly, the public at large is perfectly capable of paying attention when it wants to. So what are we to conclude from this information? The problem isn't your audience's attention span--it's your content.

I get a lot of emails from public relations professionals hoping to get my attention. More often than not, I cannot use the pitches I receive. And, increasingly, I am baffled by the emails I get. It's clear that many of these people either have no idea who I am and what EContent covers, or they're just "spraying and praying." Either way, there is pretty much no excuse for this. The truth is, though, that this is the way many content professionals are still doing their jobs. Despite all the analytics capabilities available to us, we're still just going with our gut, relying on the pitches that come into our inboxes, and generally winging it.

Are cable companies laboring under the illusion that they can keep customers by simply refusing to provide them with an easy, decent way to watch web content on their internet-connected televisions? This may be the last chance cable providers have to prove their value, and they are tossing it away.

It's easy to forget what an important role social media plays in the media at large. When you're busy taking BuzzFeed quizzes on Facebook or sharing pictures of your cat on Instagram, it's hard to see these tools as anything but hives of narcissism. But as I write this column at the end of a long week filled with bad news, I can't help but think of social media as not only the best source for breaking news, but as the only truly free press left.

Technically, I'm still in the coveted 18- to 34-year-old marketing demographic. I've got another couple of years before all you marketers stop fighting so hard for my attention (and my dollars). From a purely practical point of view, I've never understood the clamor for youth dollars-mostly because they don't have any money. Sure, they're wanton spenders, but they don't have much money to begin with. And I'm not the only one who calls into question the time-honored tradition of chasing 18 to 34 year olds. According to a post on Villing & Company's blog, "By 2010, 50 percent of all consumer spending in America will be by people over the age of 50." In fact, that 50-plus age demographic already outspends the 18-34 group by more than $1 trillion per year. That's a lot of money.

As I sit down to write this column, there is so much going on in the news-I barely know where to start. Suffice it to say: The courts are messing up the internet. Let's start with the most high-profile decision that may be affecting you and your content before you know it. It started earlier this year when a U.S. District Court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Open Internet rules from 2010.

I spent a couple of years working in book publishing during my 20s. I learned a lot while I was there, but one of the things that surprised me most was that the book industry operates solely on the gut feelings of its editors and publishers. That was fine when book publishing was more a gentleman's hobby than a legitimate business, but these days, book publishers are integral parts of the money-making media empires of people such as Rupert Murdoch.

All of a sudden, I was seeing subscription services everywhere. I started paying attention to the advertisements on my podcasts for Dollar Shave Club. I decided to take Groupon up on an offer for a subscription to the Sunday edition of The Hartford Courant. And because of my new interest in this particular business model, Google and Facebook started serving me ads for more subscriptions that I didn't know existed. As I thought about what seems to be a subscription renaissance, I found myself wondering why so many newspapers seem to be having difficulty with that old subscription model while other companies seem to be blossoming under it.

On the average weekday, I spend hours sorting through my social media feeds-mostly Facebook and Twitter. I fire up HootSuite to make this task a little easier and dutifully retweet, share, and schedule posts. For many of us, managing social media has gone from a way to kill time to an integral part of our jobs. But by Friday night, I'm ready to hang up my social media hat (except for Pinterest because I need it to make new, exciting meals). On Saturday and Sunday, I need a break from the endless streams of news, opinions, and baby pictures-but giving up social networks all together seems unfeasible.

I got to wondering what purpose Glass was serving for this man as he squeezed ripe fruit and inspected heads of lettuce. Was Whole Foods feeding coupons directly to his field of vision? Is that why he headed over to check out the soap? Was there a sale I didn't know was going on because I'm a schmuck who stills relies on the tiny computer in my pocket (aka my iPhone) to get my information?

Last December, I was at the Gilbane Conference in Boston, and, toward the end of my 2 days there, I headed into a session about the Internet of Things. It had been a while since I'd thought about the idea of my refrigerator and stove talking to each other, so I thought it was time to get an update from the experts. I'd always thought the idea was a little creepy, but, after the session, I left wondering if it wasn't both incredibly useful and a bit impractical. And, of course, I was thinking about what this all means for content creators.

As I sat down to write this column, Anonymous was in the news again--this time for its vow to help bring about justice in yet another depressingly mishandled sexual assault case. This time the news was coming out of Maryville, Mo. Anonymous, known for its internet vigilantism, called for further investigation into the Daisy Coleman case. It wrote: "Mayor Jim Fall, your hands are dirty. Maryville, expect us." And it wasn't long before Anonymous got exactly what it wanted. The case was reopened.

I recently spent an afternoon going down a podcast rabbit hole. It started with the DoubleX podcast from Slate, which led me to an episode of Dan Savage's Savage Love podcast, which pointed me to--of all things--the OkCupid blog. I was more surprised than anybody when I discovered we could all learn something from OkCupid about analytics and all the very scary things websites know about us.

Over the past few months, regular listeners of Marc Maron's WTF podcast have heard the comedian rail about a patent troll that is threatening the livelihood of many podcasters. For those of you who don't listen, Maron has also written about it on his blog. In a recent episode of WTF Maron interviewed Moon Zappa, and we all found out that Frank Zappa may just be the savior that podcasters needed.

A while back, I had a dream that I won the lottery. In the dream, I didn't quit my job and buy a private island. No, I used my lottery winnings to buy the local newspaper where I started my journalism career. It's a small weekly with a long history of serving my hometown, and it has a negligible web presence.

The other night, I crawled into bed and cracked open a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini that I bought last summer at a used bookshop. A photograph fell out into my lap. At first, I wondered when I'd tucked a picture into the pages, but then I realized I didn't have any idea who the people in the image were. It's a couple of young people-probably college age-smiling in a posed shot for the camera. I imagined it was probably a graduation shot of some sort-maybe a wedding. I tucked it back into the pages with the idea of using the smiling pair as a bookmark. But it reminded me that the paperback I had just started reading was, in fact, used goods.

It's the time of year when my life nearly has been taken over by my garden. Between the watering, the weeding, and the picking, I'm thinking about hiring a small staff. Frankly, it's a wonder that I still have a job because come May, my mind is always wandering out into the yard. When the sun goes down or the weather turns bad and I'm stuck inside, I'm combing Pinterest for ideas-most of which I'll never be able to implement. This spring, though, many of my thoughts were consumed by compost ... or the lack thereof.

Why the heck was this magazine for car lovers (or, at least, Subaru lovers) doing stories about restaurants and local food? Were the chefs featured in the story picking the food up from farmers and hauling it back to their kitchens in their Outbacks? I just didn't get it.Then I realized that Subaru was just practicing good content marketing.

By the time you read this column, Facebook's redesigned Timeline and News Feed will be old news. But as I was casting around for column ideas, I instant messaged my friend Mike--otherwise known as @tech_envy--and asked him what he thought I should write about. I was stuck for ideas. He wanted to talk integration. Specifically, he wanted to talk about the changes to Facebook's look, which would put new emphasis on your activity.